Today, I did nothing. There's really nothing to report. Nothing. I slept, edited photos, updated my iTunes library. Nada.
Yesterday! I woke up late. :( I really wanted to make it to church, but slept through my alarm. I didn't even hear it! I'll have to change the noise or something I suppose. So I looked up information for my essay and cleaned! I also Skyped with Aneka and the girls and my dad. :) Josh then came over and we went to go pick up Jonas at his house, to go find the "lights." His flat mates decided they'd like to go with us so we were like okay! Natacha also met us at Jonas's apartment. We headed out to a neighborhood (barrio) called Ruzafa. Calle Sueca was the name of one of the streets we were looking for. It took us a little while to get there. We had to ask a few times if we were going the right way. When we finally got to the right street, we were SO happy we went down it! Oh my, it was amazing. On both sides of the street, the buildings were COVERED, absolutely COVERED in lights! They also had a huge "Eiffel Tower" made completely of more colorful lights! It made Christmas lights in Pocatello look weak to say the least. They also had one of the biggest Falles (big huge statues of paper mache) that I had seen so far. They weren't even finished building it yet. Very neat. The streets branching off from the falles there were spectacular. I felt like I was at a Carnival or something! They had little carts to buy churros and hot chocolate and candy and waffles! I got some cotton candy!! It was funny. Seriously, the cotton candy was HUGE. Overall rating for last night on a scale from 1 to awesome, it was ridiculously fantastic!
Saturday is next up for updates. I played tour guide for the afternoon! I woke up and met my friend Will in Plaza de la Reina to show him and his friend around! Will went to high school with me in Poky, now he's studying at U of I, but for the semester he's studying in Alicante, which is only about 2 hours south of Valencia! So they took a train up to see Valencia for the day. We went and bought churros first, yay since we had a little time before the Mascletá. So we went to the Mascletá at 2 p.m. in the Plaza de Ayuntamiento. A mascleta, if I haven't explained it before, is a daytime firework show! Nothing like the huge ones in the sky on the 4th of July, they are mostly ground fireworks and extremely huge fountains kind of? There's so much smoke afterwards! It's also extremely loud. I don't know if I have heard anything louder in my life. Seriously. It was ridiculous. We were in a sea of people as well, not so much fun to get out of. I then took them to one of my favorite places to eat in Valencia called "La Rentadora." It's on a sidestreet off of el barrio del Carmen. It has delicious brie and sandwiches. Oh man. The menu is also printed on a sheet of paper and you just circle what you want and had it to the waiter. I think they agreed that it was delicious. They didn't have too much time cause their train left a little before 5, so we walked to the Turia to show them how awesome it is and also to take a glimpse of the Torres del Serrano. I then walked them back to the train station, Estación del Norte. I went home and grabbed my shopping bag and went grocery shopping since I had no food in the house. I also bought myself a plant finally, yay! I hope it survives. :) I then got ready to go to dinner for my friend Kildine's birthday. She made reservations at an Italian restaurant near Plaza de la Reina. It was fun :) We shared a tomato, mozarella, basil salad and I had a pesto pasta...mmm...I love pesto...I also got to have Tiramisu for dessert!! Lucky me. :) I've been craving that stuff since I got here! After dinner, I met up with my friend Joan to head over to Jonas's apartment. He was having people over since he just moved into a new apartment. Joan is from Calpe, a city near Valencia, it's good Spanish practice for me and it's good English practice for him when we hang out. Hehe. Jonas's apartment is SO NICE. He doesn't even pay that much more than me in rent! It's probably 3 times bigger than my flat. Huge. Nice. It was fun, he had quite the assortment of chips and Lemon Fanta. I am really missing Mountain Dew lately, we did find an American store though that sells maple syrup, Pop Tarts, and Mounatin Dew!!! I'm excited to go there later. Anyways, we watched the fireworks that went off at 12 on the roof of his apartment complex! That was cool since he lives really close to Ayuntamiento. Josh and his flat mate finally showed up. I knew no one but Jonas and Joan before he showed up. Of course I talked to other people! But it's nice to know SOMEONE haha. Josh's flat mate Ruben is cool. Of course I've met him quite a few times whenever I go to Josh's house, but Josh was busy mingling and Ruben didn't know anyone else at Jonas's so I got to know him better. He likes to go camping! He's going this weekend, I'm really jealous. He had looked at the pictures of my backpacking and camping trips on Facebook and couldn't believe how pretty Idaho is. Yay, score one for Idaho! He's from a little coastal town here so it was some more Spanish practice for me! It seems like I end up speaking English to a lot of Erasmus students just because everyone knows it and it's easier. No bueno. So whenver I get the chance to talk to a SPANISH person, I am happy to practice. Anyways, Natacha and Juan finally showed up as well. We had a good time laughing and dancing and meeting new people. :)
Friday, I went to a birthday party with Jonas, just because he was going alone and said I was cooler than anyone else that was going to be there. Flattery can get you anywhere, that is what this story teaches us. So we showed up to this girl's apartment I didn't know, and it turned out to be the apartment of my Irish friend Orla as well!! So Orla and Kildine were there! I was excited that they were there, it made that night much more enjoyable! I also met a girl from Denmark named Tina. She was extremely nice and very pretty!
The only thing I cannot stand are the fireworks that people put off all the time every day!! They don't like pretty fireworks, the only fireworks that matter here are the NOISY ones. It scares the crap out of me every time I am walking down the street!! But, overall, this weekend was very enjoyable. I saw a lot of stuff, and it got me way excited for all the activities going on this week for Fallas!!!
I'll update more! Promise.
Fallas photos are fantastic. The lights are not like anything I've seen. How fun. Glad you're making lots of friends and having good Spanish food. Thanks for taking time for a detailed post. Fun to read!
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